Shanghai Shenanigans, Arabian Whispers

okay what happens when a country boy moves to shanghai and then on to Arabia?

Thursday, October 27, 2011

“Time we pray sir.”

A minute or so before, I had heard the call to prayer over the public address. These public address systems are all over Jeddah with different men calling the prayer at each one. The sounds blend like harmonizing mountain singers, forlorn and spiritual, distant and near, droning, droning, droning.

Besides the two employees, I was the only one in the bookstore. This particular bookstore was a small one. There was only one small area, a few shelves, dedicated to English lit. In my hands was a copy of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Reading stuffy mentally unstable Woolf in Arabia was my inner debate. Stream of consciousness with these dunes and camels and sheiks in thobes, the spells of jinns, and the experimentation with English amongst technical school graduates – I thought of all of this as I listened to the call to prayer and sighed a sigh of relief.

A sigh of relief because this time I had made it to my destination just in time and I had time to browse the bookstore before one of the two employees called to me (alluding to the fact that I had to leave the store):

"Time we pray sir."

I had walked a few kilometers to the store from the compound, a store that I had noticed a few nights ago when the shuttle had passed it. In the shuttle, Mr. Uzair takes us to the Corniche or to the Red Sea Mall. Mr. Uzair is from Pakistan. That is where his family live. He has lived here 30 years. He has a son in college in Pakistan. He sees his family maybe once a year. His life is in Saudi. His family’s life is in Pakistan.

Although, I had started out a bit before 7 p.m. to the bookstore, I was not sure if I would make it before the call to prayer that according to my calculations would be in the vicinity of 7:30. The other night, I arrived at the cleaners a minute or less after the call to prayer and that cleaning bird had flown. It was 5:55 when I arrived at the cleaners.

By my calculations, I had figured at least 20 minutes leeway until the call for prayer, which I thought was 6:20, the prayer being 6:30. I had arrived a good 20 or 25 minutes before this. If they were to be in their places at 6:30, then they should have plenty of time to get to their places if they closed shop at 6:20. At times, the call to prayer does not seem to follow a set schedule. Maybe the prayer callers do not have accurate watches of maybe the first one to call does not have a watch and everyone just follows him. I am still trying to figure out the system. The call to prayer does not seem to coincide with the world clock.

If you are walking along Sultan Road or King Abdullah Azziz Road when the prayer is called, you will see cars pulling over left and right. The first men to get to a makeshift prayer spot lay down the prayer rug. The men that arrive after take a place on the prayer rug unless the rug is full then another rug is laid.

Or if you are at Mall of Arabia when the prayer is called, the store gates come down and people take their places on the rugs wherever they find out of the way spots. Once when I was at Mall of Arabia, I saw a group of women in heaps of hijabs in front of a lingerie shop with prayer rugs laid praying as if they were praying to the lingerie. Oh Holy Hustler Superstore on Sunset Boulevard, this is a whole new way to look at lingerie.

Mushmouth Saud, A Jinn cast a spell on him I am quite sure. When this happened, I do not know. Maybe this happened when he was much younger. Maybe it happened just before he appeared in my life at TVTC, the technical school where I teach. In my head I hear Bowie’s TVC15 which should by all rights be the theme song for the school and probably for me and probably for modern society in general. But that’s not important now. Maybe the spell that has been cast on Saud is somehow family related or maybe past life related. Who knows for sure?

Maybe if I pray every, each night I sit there pleading

"Send back my dream test baby,

She's my main feature"

My T V C one five, he, he just

Stares back unblinking

Saud, as perhaps I have said before, has a perpetual fat lip and his eyes are crossed. When he first arrived a few days after classes began, I sized him up as a troublemaker, even a bully perhaps. This might be due to my shallowness. I could not see past the spell that the Jinn had cast. There was a vacancy in him.

…he, he just

Stares back unblinking…

Saadoon and Saud sit together. They help each other. Saud looks at what Saadoon writes. Saadoon tries to figure out what to write. Saud tries to speak but his fat malformed lips get in the way. As I hinted, he is like an Arabian Mushmouth, Fat Albert’s sidekick. When he tries to speak, I have to go over to him to hear him better. He has to say it a few times. Saadoon helps him.

A few days ago, Michael and I were having fourth week remorse. To cheer ourselves up, we decided to switch classes for what we call fudging Module. (We substitute a few letters in fudging and turn it into an altogether different word by the way.) Michael took over my classroom. I took over his. He teaches higher level students than I do. Although his students had just seen him 20 minutes before, I convinced them that he had left the school with a buxom blonde and packed bags. Camel Eyes was incredulous about this.

“Teacher Michael Leave?!”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “He was angry for some reason and has gone back to America.”

“America?” America as a question echoed across the classroom.

“Yes,” I confirmed once again and then asked, “Did you do something to make him angry? I have no idea why he left. He said you called him fat?”

“Fat?... America?” once again echoed around the classroom.

“Yes, yes. America,” I was honestly starting to feel a bit guilty.

“Teacher, why this?” one of the students, maybe a Mohammad pointed at my long right pinky nail.

“Guitar,” I said as I pantomimed playing a guitar.

“Oh guitar,” to this there were multiple nods of approval as the word ‘guitar’ echoed around the room.

Since I had traded lessons with Michael, I did not want to be the one talking. I wanted the students to talk. I wanted to find out about them. They wanted to find out about me. They asked me my age. I told them to guess. The guesses ranged from 25 to 68. Hosam said 19 but I think he was trying to flatter me.

Since rock and roll is foreign and a bit magical to them, I thought I would mention that I once had a band. I wrote the band name on the board. I tried to pantomime the reason behind the name. I failed miserably. They asked me if I was famous like Westlife and Celine Dion. They wanted to see a video.

This is the slippery slope. Some say pop music is forbidden in the kingdom. I have been told to not play songs in class. Leave the Dylan and Beatles at home. Do not tempt them with the Stones or Led Zep. Most of the students would raise no objections but if one does, then there is trouble. Nevertheless, I got on Youtube and searched for a video. I pulled up “Pop Heiress Dies.” When the video started, there was no sound coming out of the speakers.

Hosam came up to help me figure out the problem. Then another student came up, an Abdullah or Mohammad. Both of them followed the cables to the connections. Everything was in order. The class was waiting to see and hear the video. We were stumped. Finally, Hosam looked at the amplifier and hit the power button. I started the video. Suddenly there was a picture and sound. Near the beginning of the video, I had forgotten about the girl dancing in a bikini, which was another no no in the Kingdom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8kwPdsZ1Cg

After the video played, a few of the students thought that I was just having a laugh with them. The person singing in the video was not me they told me. They saw no resemblance whatsoever. Thus, I did what I have not done in a long time. I sang. I sang acapello.

I was not sure how this would go over. And I did not know if I could even sing without my voice cracking. In front of this small group of 10 or so students, I was more nervous than I had been singing ever before.

After the boisterous applause, I told them thank you and came clean about Michael. He was in my classroom; we had switched. This sent Camel Eyes, Michael’s student and star of the classroom, into a spasm of misused expletives embedded in threats such as: “I am to asskick going Mr. Michael!” “Oh when Iblur blur blur him!” “Oh I am so ass angry!”Last he added: “I am coming with you! I ass is kick!”

Not one to censor or impede students, Camel Eyes came back with me to my classroom. He was ranting and raving the entire time. I was a little afraid for Michael actually. My plan was if it turned into a punch-up maybe I could get one of the students like Hassan Mohammad to intervene and gently restrain Camel Eyes.

Arriving at my classroom, with trepidation I opened the door. There Michael was. The students were quiet. A student was talking. Everyone was listening. Camel Eyes looked at him and his anger left. In a loud enough voice for the students to hear, Michael told me he had each student present himself and each had done a great job. We both gave them a big hand. Michael and Camel Eyes left. Camel Eyes was chattering away to him as they left the classroom.

Later in the teacher’s office, I told Michael that the students had really enjoyed his lesson. He asked me about the student who sat next to the student that was sitting by the beam, the beam that divided the classroom in half.

“Saadoon sits next to the beam and Saud sits next to Saadoon,” I replied. “Why?”

“Well, when it was his turn to present,” Michael started and then stopped.

“Yes?” I questioned. I was thinking that Saud might have made trouble. Michael, however, is very good at nipping trouble, or getting kicked out of a mall in Riyadh, one or the other, so I was not that worried.

“Well, uh, I felt bad for him.”

“You felt bad for him? Why?” This truly perplexed me. Saud had a touch of Kotter’s Sweathogs in him and I was not sure what had happened. Maybe he had made a whoopee cushion sound.

“When it was his turn, he started shaking so bad that he could hardly even speak.”

“What?” This was not the Saud that I had noticed. Sure he was always copying off of Saadoon but I assumed this had to do with him being cross-eyed. Suddenly, I felt empathy for Saud. This brought back memories of being called upon at school and being afraid to answer but I don’t think I ever visibly shook when I answered.

Saud is a big guy, probably six feet tall. If he were American, he would probably be a baseball player. He has an all American look to him. If you squinted that is, he has an all American look to him.

Definitely, Saud is under some evil jinn’s spell. I had not noticed in the three weeks plus since school had begun that Saud had any sort of nervous condition. After Michael told me this, indistinct correct answers started to register in my head that before had just been unidentifiable background noise. Now the background noise I realized was Saud answering the questions in his Mushmouth way.

A few days later, Saadoon coaxed Saud into writing a sentence on the board. The students were expressing their condolences to the King’s family because the King’s brother Prince Sultan had passed away this week. Suddenly, I was hyper aware of Saud’s situation.

“Teacher! Teacher! NO! NO!” Waleed who sits on the other side of Saud yelled while Saud was writing his answer on the board. With this he feigns a heart attack hoping that I would do the same.

“It’s all right Saud. It’s okay. You are doing good,” is all I could say. “Waleed, Saud is doing fine.”

“No! Teacher!” And with that Waleed collapsed in his chair.

At the beginning of the term, we were short teachers due to visa problems so each class had four or five extra students. When the missing teachers got here, the extra students were transferred into the newly arrived teachers’ classrooms. Saleh was one of these students. He was a student of whom I was fond. He and Eesi were buddies.

Last week, he came into my classroom with Eesi. They had something to ask but they were not sure how to ask. Finally, somehow they got it across to me that Saleh wanted to come back into my classroom. He had talked to Samir (who runs the school) about coming back. I volunteered to talk to Samir. So after class that is what I did. Samir told me he would see what he could do. I assumed he was just paying me lip service.

Yesterday, Saleh came back to my classroom. I had been sent an email telling me to expect him so when he was not there at the beginning of class I asked Eesi where he was. Eesi called him. Saleh was sleeping. By the time he got to class, class was almost over. Maybe I had a mistake in going to Samir on his behalf to get him back into my class.

When he did not show, I assume he thought that I had not been alerted that he was going to be coming back into my class. He figured he could sleep in or miss class altogether. When he did arrive, he had a note with him to tell me to let him back into class. Being over an hour late the first day back was not a good start in my book. Nor did it help matters that we had a holiday coming up in a few days. Already, the students were in holiday mode. The students driving from Taif and Mecca everyday were going to be excused the two days before the holiday because of the Hajj traffic. Hajj actually translates from Arabic into pilgrimage to Mecca. Supposedly, millions of pilgrims will be coming in for this.

Since the holiday is coming up, I wrote on the board:

“What will you do over Hajj?”

Granted, I had to explain the word ‘over’. The students, Waleed and Saadoon mostly, kept asking “Game over?”

Once I had clarified the meaning –

“Game over?”

Or thought I had clarified the meaning –

“Game over?”

Or at least tried to clarify the meaning for ‘over,’ the students came up and wrote their answers on the board. Saadoon wrote:

“I will cut my hair over Hajj.”

Rami wrote:

“I will work over Hajj.”

Mosleh wrote:

“I will drive taxi over Hajj.”

Waleed wrote:

“I will travel over Hajj.”

Then Hassan Mohammad came to the board. Hassan Mohammad scares me. I admit it. He looks like a thug owing to the fact that he is brutish and has a scar down the left side of his face that makes him look like some sort of James Bond villain ready to throw his teacher to the sharks or piranhas or cobras – whatever is handy.

The first day of class he just sat and stared at me with that James Bond villain stare – a Dr. No henchman, Mr. Jaws poker pal. He had no pen, no paper, no notebook.

“Where is your pen?” I asked in the most intimidating voice I could muster, which I am sure sounded more like Ichabod Crane than Clint Eastwood.

He just shrugged.Eesi gave him a pen. With that I gave Hassan Mohammad a dirty look as if to say this sort of tomfoolery did not fly in my classroom. He just smiled back. Whether this was an apology or the smile that a cobra gives to his prey, I did not know.

As those first weeks went past, Hassan Mohammad continuously rubbed me the wrong way – at times 30 minutes late to class, at times he was a no show. At that point, I figured he would miss enough classes to be thrown out of the program and I would be shut of him.

But then, something strange happened, something unexplainable. Although he would still occasionally be late or miss class, he actually started to become more engaged. When I would be at the board trying to squeeze out an answer from the students at large I would hear:

“Is.”

I would turn around and I would hear it again:

“Is”

“Mohammad Hassan was that you.”

“Is,” he would repeat.

“Yes, Hassan Mohammad,” I would confirm “My brother is tall. Very good.”

Then when I would have the students come up to the board and write a sentence on their own, Mohammad would come up and usually write close to a flawless sentence and I would be somewhat dumbfounded. How could this young man who looks as if he might tear my head off without much effort, how could he write this flawless English sentence? – Having nothing to do with the fact that he often smells vaguely of camel dung.

In actuality, he has an inner beauty that I had overlooked. The smile that I thought was a cobra smile is actually a warm-hearted smile. When I congratulate him, he shakes my hand. Hassan Mohammad, I was wrong.

So when he wrote:

“I will slaughter camel over Hajj,” I did not flinch as I congratulated him on the proper use of ‘slaughter’.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Who will love Aladdin Sane?

During the day, everyone stays inside - in cars, in buildings, in houses - in the air conditioning. As the sun goes down and night approaches, Jeddah starts bustling with activity. Boys roar by in their cars; sometimes these boys are the ripe old age of 12.

Watching him dash away / Swinging an old bouquet…

On weekends in the evening, Abrahim and I go to the Corniche, which runs along the Red Sea or an inlet of such where we meet up with his cousins. Or sometimes, I ride with his cousin Abdu who is a bit more fluent in his English. Last night, Abdu wanted me to hear what he says is one of the most beautiful English songs. Westlife sings the song. After splashing around in the Red Sea, I can strangely embrace Westlife. Please don’t tell anyone.

All the seas go coast to coast / Find the place I love the most / Where the fields are green / To see you once again my love.

And then it hits me:

Who will love Aladdin Sane?

Outside the window of my apartment in the compound, on the other side of the concrete wall with the barbed wire on top and then on past the second retaining wall that keep trucks from parking and exploding and blowing up my apartment and on past the four-lane road and then there, there in the parking lot that houses Al Baik (the favored Saudi fast food chain that I heard is actually not Saudi, and that same building that houses a few clothing shops including European Shoes that sales, for the most part, shoes made by Caterpillar which is pretty much not European but maybe Kansan or Nebraskan), African immigrants wash cars. Where they get the water, I do not know but there is a gaggle of them with buckets and sponges. There are puddles everywhere. Sometimes I watch them from my window.

A few weeks ago after I had gone to the Corniche, Abraham took me to Al Baik for the first time. We arrived during prayer time. At prayer time, as I have said before, everything stops for 20 minutes at least. Sometimes shop owners are in no hurry to open to the mad throng that is waiting because the crowd gathers like birds in uh, well, Hitchcock’s The Birds. This is what happens; someone who finally gets fed up after a thirty-minute wait starts pounding on the door like the birds that got fed up waiting for Tippi Hedren or the others trapped in the house to come out of the house and the birds pecked their way into the upper floors. Thirty-five minutes later the doors open after five minutes of mad knocking and the crowd flock in like birds or, more like, swarm in like bees.

So in this instance we were waiting in Ibrahim’s battered Honda with nothing to do but wait. One of the Africans approached. Ibrahim rolled down the window and negotiated a car wash. Soon after, bucket upon bucket of water landed upon the car starting with the windshield, thrown on the car by a bedraggled young man who looked to be in his mid-teens.

This is his life. Washing cars in Saudi is his life. Dressed in rags is his life. Living in someplace amongst strangers who do not care for him, do not notice him, is his life, anonymous and marginalized. This ragged Saudi life must be better than what he had in Africa. Do we have to see someone less fortunate who does not question his fortune to know how lucky we are?

That being said, I snapped pix of him while he washed the car because I was struck by something in him, something unexplainable, maybe his acceptance of life with no question. Something stirred me and I don’t know why but it did, maybe it was some sort of Death in Venice wish. My involvement or notice spurred him to clown a bit and throw a fresh bucket of water on the windshield to shield himself from my camera, my life from his - my age, his youth. He smiled as he splashed.

After he washed the car and Ibrahim paid him, I took my picture with him. Ibrahim navigated this because the young man was not sure what I wanted. Why would someone want a picture with him his eyes asked? This seemed like some sort of hallowed moment. Now, here and there I see him in the late afternoon when he arrives to wash cars or at night when he is wet with soap and perspiration and we recognize each other’s existence with a nod of the head. Hallowed be thy name.

Nighttime is when the Saudis truly live. This seems to be the routine for most of them from what I have witnessed. They get up, go to school or work; their first meal is at noon. That is breakfast. They have a big lunch, maybe cupsa, after work or school and then they take a four-hour nap and wake up and go out.

The streets are roaring with cars and activity at night. Sometimes, driving down the highway, I will spot three or four cars pulled over on the side of the road with young men doing nothing but talking and laughing and yelling revving their engines and being nothing more than young men but young men without alcohol since alcohol is illegal in the Kingdom.

Motor sensational…

Sometimes as well, and this always makes me laugh, I see a pre-pubescent at the wheel that can barely reach the pedals. Yes, I know this is a serious business but it cracks me up. Women can’t drive so they have to have their young sons who are not driving age drive to run errands or to pick up older or younger sisters.

Here four cars crowd into three lanes. The lanes seem to be nothing more than white painted lines.

But then what happens at lunch here? For the first few weeks, I went next door to the school for a kibda sandwich but then I decided to change it up. Last week, Michael asked me if I wanted to get falafel at his favorite falafel place that was a bit of a walk. I told him sure. So we started walking. Fahd joined us. He seems to be wherever I am quite often. He has a mountain of things to say to me but all he can ever say since I often saw him at the kibda place is:

“Teacher like kibda?”

The three of us walked a couple 100 meters and then a car nearly overtook us screeching to a halt seconds away from English teacher of the Michael-and-Tyson-variety extinction. We turned around to see a rumbling white 80s model Chevrolet Caprice. Dust was still flying. The car honked. And a large figure blurry in the midday sun emerged. There stood Khaled, one of my students who is big and jolly and should be driving a Caprice. Imagine Peter Sellers coming back from the grave and playing John Candy (grave fabulous) in a movie scripted by Hunter S. Thompson (grave slightly unwashed) and directed by Jim Jarmusch (who is not yet of the grave).

“Teacher! Where you go?” He motioned for us to get in the car. That one phrase was the most English I had heard him speak yet, which made me wonder if some of these guys are just faking it to get out of doing work in class. “Me go you.”

I understood what he was trying to say and got in the front seat and Michael got in the back. As soon as I got into the car, I completely fell back in the seat because Khaled had the passenger seat and the driver seat reclined all the way back. This was his own magic carpet and he cruised the Kingdom on and in it.

“So I see you sleep as you drive,” Michael volunteered. Khaled just let out a blast of laughter.

“Teacher where you go?”

“Falafel,” I said.

“Falafel good,” he confirmed.

Since every driver seems to think he is driving a Ferrari though he is really driving a Crown Victoria, or an Impala, or in this case, a Chevrolet Caprice; Khaled zipped in an out of traffic as if we were racing in Monte Carlo. The affect was that of a ship which through some magic power had suddenly become a rocket. At one point, since I had no seat belts, since seat belts are frowned upon in the Kingdom - or any leverage whatsoever since I was basically being propelled through this cruise ship on wheels or this oversized low-flying magic carpet - I found myself tumbling across the front seat much like Alice tumbling down the rabbit-hole.

“Teacher funny,” Khaled laughed.

We arrived at the falafel place and the falafels are godhead. This is coming from someone who is not a falafel fan but then I had never had one in Saudi. Stuffed in pita bread, there were carrots and tomatoes, French fries and all sorts of other secret magic ingredients. I ate a whole one and then I split one with Michael. While we ate, we crowded six people onto a bench made for four people.

After this gastronomic revelation, the next day, Michael – we share an office – asked me if I wanted to get falafel again since I had been so demonstrative in my love for my first Arabian falafel.

“Yes,” I replied. “Should we try to con a student into taking us?”

“Yes,” Michael confirmed with a giggle. With that, we walked to the school gate where students congregate and asked somewhat loudly who wanted to take us to get falafel. Several students offered.

We accepted a ride with Camel Eyes, Michael’s student. I had met him at the kibda place one day at the start of the term. At that time, I told Michael that I met his student who has beautiful eyes, like a camel. Now we call him Camel Eyes. In the car, Michael who teaches higher-level students told him that we call him Camel Eyes. I added that he has beautiful eyes and that I love camels. He told me that most people think his eyes are not beautiful. I repeated his eyes are beautiful.

Last night, I got a call from a student who was ready to take me to the Red Sea Mall, which we had been discussing for a week or so. He is an Abdullah. We were set to go on Tuesday. To him, Tuesday is Thursday. I tried to explain there was a misunderstanding. Because to me, Thursday is Thursday not Tuesday but he did not understand this. He wanted to go on Tuesday, which is really Thursday because that is when all of the girls are there. And since this society is segregated and single men cannot be around single women, he is often not allowed in the mall on Thursday, which he calls Tuesday, because Thursday, again which he calls Tuesday, is family night.

So he called me when I was with Abdu and Ibrahim and I tried to explain the mix-up, which I could not relay so I finally had Abdu explain it to him. But this made him hang up because he did not understand that I had put Abdu on the phone to explain the situation with him. He thought this to be interference. Naturally, here there are a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunications.

As in what happened on Wednesday afternoon, Fareed invited me to go drink the milk of the camel with him. After that we would go to watch the Ittihad Football Club (the Saudi team) play at the stadium. Abdiramen told me this at the end of the last class of the day. I was perplexed. Why did Abdiramen assume that I knew about this? Then I remembered a few weeks ago when I had marked a date on Fareed’s calendar when I would go somewhere with him.

Fareed is full of energy and is linguistically ambitious at times but at other times when I want him to complete a task he says “Homework,” which always perturbs me because I always know that he is going to say it before he does. He wears me out and I had already had two heart attacks and a meltdown during the day. Not to mention, my head was starting to pound.

The heart attacks were the simple heart attacks that occur when someone says ‘is’ instead of ‘has’ or ‘he’ instead of ‘she’. This is what happens - my eyes roll back in my head and I fall over what happens to be in my way, be it a desk, a chair, another teacher, or a student, whatever. Sometimes a student will come and fan me to revive me.

My inspiration for this comes directly from Edith Hicks, my journalism teacher my sophomore year of high school. In my younger years before I could truly appreciate performance, she was the first teacher who saw the importance of impromptu performance in the classroom. By the time, I had her as a teacher she was near the end of her career but that never stopped her from putting a fruit bowl on her head and singing the Chiquita banana song.

So my mock heart attacks may or may not impose the importance of ‘has’ and ‘is’ or ‘he’ and ‘she’. Or maybe it keeps those metaphysical wolves at the door at bay. Sanity must be my friend. Calgon take me away from meltdowns.

Who will love Aladdin Sane?

Before I go on, I should say that later in the day, after my aforementioned meltdown, my mental sun shone. “Metal Guru is it you?” When Mohammad came to tell me that Bandar would not be in my afternoon class because he is pregnant, I seriously had trouble containing myself. Naturally, I asked Bandar if he was expecting and I pantomimed pregnancy with my right hand making a basketball shape in front of my stomach. Bandar always has a look of shock and surprise on his face, which becomes more pronounced the longer he thinks. I was quite proud that Mohammad - the Mohammad who asked if I would accept his offer to live with him and his three cousins in a two room apartment – could concoct that sort of English ribbing.

When I had my meltdown, there was really nothing unusual going on in the classroom. There was the usual group of students who were listening and the usual group that weren’t. Yussef who I thought had been kicked out of the program because of several absences and extreme tardiness was sitting right by my desk. Yussef is the Herman Munster in my life, not scary just annoying with that same sort of Herman Munster clumsiness and oafishness.

We had been talking about car crashes. This was the question and answer:

“Did you crash your car?”

“Yes, I crashed my car.” Or “Yes, I did crash my car.”

Students had written the answers on the board.

Yussef showed me his answer:

“Did you crash your car?”

“Claw wife indecipherable house.”

Granted, I love the Dadaist movement just as much as the next fish is a light bulb but my classroom has not advanced to the stage of dada. Thus, Yussef coming in and generally dada-ing up my my classroom via his Herman Munster persona was an annoyance to say the least. Especially when he had the gall to start chanting:

When he walked up to my desk, Saadoon did not know he was walking up to a loaded gun pointed at the first person to be stupid enough to pull the trigger. He was pleased with what he had written in his notebook:

“Did you crash your car?”

“Yes, I crashed my.”

“My what?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “My what.”

Of course, deep breaths were in order while Herman Munster Yussef in the background chanted:

Also keep in mind that since he was at my desk and Herman Munster Yussef was chanting theBreak Teacher! Break mantra, this gave the rest of the classroom carte blanche to bring their general disruptiveness to a crescendo much like the 20 bar orchestral break in the Sgt Pepper closer ‘A Day in the Life.’

Honestly, I was starting to become envious of the man who ‘blew his mind out in a car. He didn’t notice that the lights had changed.” Did I notice that my lights had changed? At this point, there was a yellow light flashing in my head.

“My what?” I asked again with an increase in urgency. “I crashed my what?”

At this point, Saadoon had that sun-cooked carp look on his face and we were at the point of no return.

Here the montage becomes clear as the aforementioned 20 bar orchestral break plays “A Day in the Life” – an atom bomb exploding; Frankenstein pulling the head off of his bride; Jack Nicholson hacking his way through the bathroom door; the Nazi’s lover blasting him with a machine gun in Genet’s Funeral Rites; Anthony Perkin’s in a wig; John and Yoko’s Two Virgin’salbum cover; and, last but certainly not least, Shelley Winters as Shelley Winters.

During the day, everyone stays inside - in cars, in buildings, in houses - in the air conditioning. As the sun goes down and night approaches, Jeddah starts bustling with activity. Boys roar by in their cars; sometimes these boys are the ripe old age of 12.

Watching him dash away / Swinging an old bouquet…

On weekends in the evening, Abrahim and I go to the Corniche, which runs along the Red Sea or an inlet of such where we meet up with his cousins. Or sometimes, I ride with his cousin Abdu who is a bit more fluent in his English. Last night, Abdu wanted me to hear what he says is one of the most beautiful English songs. Westlife sings the song. After splashing around in the Red Sea, I can strangely embrace Westlife. Please don’t tell anyone.

All the seas go coast to coast / Find the place I love the most / Where the fields are green / To see you once again my love.

And then it hits me:

Who will love Aladdin Sane?

Outside the window of my apartment in the compound, on the other side of the concrete wall with the barbed wire on top and then on past the second retaining wall that keep trucks from parking and exploding and blowing up my apartment and on past the four-lane road and then there, there in the parking lot that houses Al Baik (the favored Saudi fast food chain that I heard is actually not Saudi, and that same building that houses a few clothing shops including European Shoes that sales, for the most part, shoes made by Caterpillar which is pretty much not European but maybe Kansan or Nebraskan), African immigrants wash cars. Where they get the water, I do not know but there is a gaggle of them with buckets and sponges. There are puddles everywhere. Sometimes I watch them from my window.

A few weeks ago after I had gone to the Corniche, Abraham took me to Al Baik for the first time. We arrived during prayer time. At prayer time, as I have said before, everything stops for 20 minutes at least. Sometimes shop owners are in no hurry to open to the mad throng that is waiting because the crowd gathers like birds in uh, well, Hitchcock’s The Birds. This is what happens; someone who finally gets fed up after a thirty-minute wait starts pounding on the door like the birds that got fed up waiting for Tippi Hedren or the others trapped in the house to come out of the house and the birds pecked their way into the upper floors. Thirty-five minutes later the doors open after five minutes of mad knocking and the crowd flock in like birds or, more like, swarm in like bees.

So in this instance we were waiting in Ibrahim’s battered Honda with nothing to do but wait. One of the Africans approached. Ibrahim rolled down the window and negotiated a car wash. Soon after, bucket upon bucket of water landed upon the car starting with the windshield, thrown on the car by a bedraggled young man who looked to be in his mid-teens.

This is his life. Washing cars in Saudi is his life. Dressed in rags is his life. Living in someplace amongst strangers who do not care for him, do not notice him, is his life, anonymous and marginalized. This ragged Saudi life must be better than what he had in Africa. Do we have to see someone less fortunate who does not question his fortune to know how lucky we are?

That being said, I snapped pix of him while he washed the car because I was struck by something in him, something unexplainable, maybe his acceptance of life with no question. Something stirred me and I don’t know why but it did, maybe it was some sort of Death in Venice wish. My involvement or notice spurred him to clown a bit and throw a fresh bucket of water on the windshield to shield himself from my camera, my life from his - my age, his youth. He smiled as he splashed.

After he washed the car and Ibrahim paid him, I took my picture with him. Ibrahim navigated this because the young man was not sure what I wanted. Why would someone want a picture with him his eyes asked? This seemed like some sort of hallowed moment. Now, here and there I see him in the late afternoon when he arrives to wash cars or at night when he is wet with soap and perspiration and we recognize each other’s existence with a nod of the head. Hallowed be thy name.

Nighttime is when the Saudis truly live. This seems to be the routine for most of them from what I have witnessed. They get up, go to school or work; their first meal is at noon. That is breakfast. They have a big lunch, maybe cupsa, after work or school and then they take a four-hour nap and wake up and go out.

The streets are roaring with cars and activity at night. Sometimes, driving down the highway, I will spot three or four cars pulled over on the side of the road with young men doing nothing but talking and laughing and yelling revving their engines and being nothing more than young men but young men without alcohol since alcohol is illegal in the Kingdom.

Motor sensational…

Sometimes as well, and this always makes me laugh, I see a pre-pubescent at the wheel that can barely reach the pedals. Yes, I know this is a serious business but it cracks me up. Women can’t drive so they have to have their young sons who are not driving age drive to run errands or to pick up older or younger sisters.

Here four cars crowd into three lanes. The lanes seem to be nothing more than white painted lines.

But then what happens at lunch here? For the first few weeks, I went next door to the school for a kibda sandwich but then I decided to change it up. Last week, Michael asked me if I wanted to get falafel at his favorite falafel place that was a bit of a walk. I told him sure. So we started walking. Fahd joined us. He seems to be wherever I am quite often. He has a mountain of things to say to me but all he can ever say since I often saw him at the kibda place is:

“Teacher like kibda?”

The three of us walked a couple 100 meters and then a car nearly overtook us screeching to a halt seconds away from English teacher of the Michael-and-Tyson-variety extinction. We turned around to see a rumbling white 80s model Chevrolet Caprice. Dust was still flying. The car honked. And a large figure blurry in the midday sun emerged. There stood Khaled, one of my students who is big and jolly and should be driving a Caprice. Imagine Peter Sellers coming back from the grave and playing John Candy (grave fabulous) in a movie scripted by Hunter S. Thompson (grave slightly unwashed) and directed by Jim Jarmusch (who is not yet of the grave).

“Teacher! Where you go?” He motioned for us to get in the car. That one phrase was the most English I had heard him speak yet, which made me wonder if some of these guys are just faking it to get out of doing work in class. “Me go you.”

I understood what he was trying to say and got in the front seat and Michael got in the back. As soon as I got into the car, I completely fell back in the seat because Khaled had the passenger seat and the driver seat reclined all the way back. This was his own magic carpet and he cruised the Kingdom on and in it.

“So I see you sleep as you drive,” Michael volunteered. Khaled just let out a blast of laughter.

“Teacher where you go?”

“Falafel,” I said.

“Falafel good,” he confirmed.

Since every driver seems to think he is driving a Ferrari though he is really driving a Crown Victoria, or an Impala, or in this case, a Chevrolet Caprice; Khaled zipped in an out of traffic as if we were racing in Monte Carlo. The affect was that of a ship which through some magic power had suddenly become a rocket. At one point, since I had no seat belts, since seat belts are frowned upon in the Kingdom - or any leverage whatsoever since I was basically being propelled through this cruise ship on wheels or this oversized low-flying magic carpet - I found myself tumbling across the front seat much like Alice tumbling down the rabbit-hole.

“Teacher funny,” Khaled laughed.

We arrived at the falafel place and the falafels are godhead. This is coming from someone who is not a falafel fan but then I had never had one in Saudi. Stuffed in pita bread, there were carrots and tomatoes, French fries and all sorts of other secret magic ingredients. I ate a whole one and then I split one with Michael. While we ate, we crowded six people onto a bench made for four people.

After this gastronomic revelation, the next day, Michael – we share an office – asked me if I wanted to get falafel again since I had been so demonstrative in my love for my first Arabian falafel.

“Yes,” I replied. “Should we try to con a student into taking us?”

“Yes,” Michael confirmed with a giggle. With that, we walked to the school gate where students congregate and asked somewhat loudly who wanted to take us to get falafel. Several students offered.

We accepted a ride with Camel Eyes, Michael’s student. I had met him at the kibda place one day at the start of the term. At that time, I told Michael that I met his student who has beautiful eyes, like a camel. Now we call him Camel Eyes. In the car, Michael who teaches higher-level students told him that we call him Camel Eyes. I added that he has beautiful eyes and that I love camels. He told me that most people think his eyes are not beautiful. I repeated his eyes are beautiful.

Last night, I got a call from a student who was ready to take me to the Red Sea Mall, which we had been discussing for a week or so. He is an Abdullah. We were set to go on Tuesday. To him, Tuesday is Thursday. I tried to explain there was a misunderstanding. Because to me, Thursday is Thursday not Tuesday but he did not understand this. He wanted to go on Tuesday, which is really Thursday because that is when all of the girls are there. And since this society is segregated and single men cannot be around single women, he is often not allowed in the mall on Thursday, which he calls Tuesday, because Thursday, again which he calls Tuesday, is family night.

So he called me when I was with Abdu and Ibrahim and I tried to explain the mix-up, which I could not relay so I finally had Abdu explain it to him. But this made him hang up because he did not understand that I had put Abdu on the phone to explain the situation with him. He thought this to be interference. Naturally, here there are a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunications.

As in what happened on Wednesday afternoon, Fareed invited me to go drink the milk of the camel with him. After that we would go to watch the Ittihad Football Club (the Saudi team) play at the stadium. Abdiramen told me this at the end of the last class of the day. I was perplexed. Why did Abdiramen assume that I knew about this? Then I remembered a few weeks ago when I had marked a date on Fareed’s calendar when I would go somewhere with him.

Fareed is full of energy and is linguistically ambitious at times but at other times when I want him to complete a task he says “Homework,” which always perturbs me because I always know that he is going to say it before he does. He wears me out and I had already had two heart attacks and a meltdown during the day. Not to mention, my head was starting to pound.

The heart attacks were the simple heart attacks that occur when someone says ‘is’ instead of ‘has’ or ‘he’ instead of ‘she’. This is what happens - my eyes roll back in my head and I fall over what happens to be in my way, be it a desk, a chair, another teacher, or a student, whatever. Sometimes a student will come and fan me to revive me.

My inspiration for this comes directly from Edith Hicks, my journalism teacher my sophomore year of high school. In my younger years before I could truly appreciate performance, she was the first teacher who saw the importance of impromptu performance in the classroom. By the time, I had her as a teacher she was near the end of her career but that never stopped her from putting a fruit bowl on her head and singing the Chiquita banana song.

So my mock heart attacks may or may not impose the importance of ‘has’ and ‘is’ or ‘he’ and ‘she’. Or maybe it keeps those metaphysical wolves at the door at bay. Sanity must be my friend. Calgon take me away from meltdowns.

Who will love Aladdin Sane?

Before I go on, I should say that later in the day, after my aforementioned meltdown, my mental sun shone. “Metal Guru is it you?” When Mohammad came to tell me that Bandar would not be in my afternoon class because he is pregnant, I seriously had trouble containing myself. Naturally, I asked Bandar if he was expecting and I pantomimed pregnancy with my right hand making a basketball shape in front of my stomach. Bandar always has a look of shock and surprise on his face, which becomes more pronounced the longer he thinks. I was quite proud that Mohammad - the Mohammad who asked if I would accept his offer to live with him and his three cousins in a two room apartment – could concoct that sort of English ribbing.

When I had my meltdown, there was really nothing unusual going on in the classroom. There was the usual group of students who were listening and the usual group that weren’t. Yussef who I thought had been kicked out of the program because of several absences and extreme tardiness was sitting right by my desk. Yussef is the Herman Munster in my life, not scary just annoying with that same sort of Herman Munster clumsiness and oafishness.

We had been talking about car crashes. This was the question and answer:

“Did you crash your car?”

“Yes, I crashed my car.” Or “Yes, I did crash my car.”

Students had written the answers on the board.

Yussef showed me his answer:

“Did you crash your car?”

“Claw wife indecipherable house.”

Granted, I love the Dadaist movement just as much as the next fish is a light bulb but my classroom has not advanced to the stage of dada. Thus, Yussef coming in and generally dada-ing up my my classroom via his Herman Munster persona was an annoyance to say the least. Especially when he had the gall to start chanting:

When he walked up to my desk, Saadoon did not know he was walking up to a loaded gun pointed at the first person to be stupid enough to pull the trigger. He was pleased with what he had written in his notebook:

“Did you crash your car?”

“Yes, I crashed my.”

“My what?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “My what.”

Of course, deep breaths were in order while Herman Munster Yussef in the background chanted:

Also keep in mind that since he was at my desk and Herman Munster Yussef was chanting the Break Teacher! Break mantra, this gave the rest of the classroom carte blanche to bring their general disruptiveness to a crescendo much like the 20 bar orchestral break in the Sgt Pepper closer ‘A Day in the Life.’

Honestly, I was starting to become envious of the man who ‘blew his mind out in a car. He didn’t notice that the lights had changed.” Did I notice that my lights had changed? At this point, there was a yellow light flashing in my head.

“My what?” I asked again with an increase in urgency. “I crashed my what?”

At this point, Saadoon had that sun-cooked carp look on his face and we were at the point of no return.

Here the montage becomes clear as the aforementioned 20 bar orchestral break plays “A Day in the Life” – an atom bomb exploding; Frankenstein pulling the head off of his bride; Jack Nicholson hacking his way through the bathroom door; the Nazi’s lover blasting him with a machine gun in Genet’s Funeral Rites; Anthony Perkin’s in a wig; John and Yoko’s Two Virgin’s album cover; and, last but certainly not least, Shelley Winters as Shelley Winters.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Like the Nose on your Face

“He has big nuts and…”

This is what happened. The students were writing paragraphs about friends, cousins, fathers, or uncles. I had them do this on the board. When Fareed came up to write on the board - once being young myself, I assumed he was being plucky – I decided to not censor him since the decision was mine whether to censor him or not. In my role, I feel as if I am a facilitator not a policeman so I let him write:

He has big nuts and a more beautiful...

And, I did not say anything. And, I saw no problem with this since there are no females in the class. And, since it is all guys the class is, to me, at times like a glorified locker room – if we can in fact use glorified in this context. And actually, no one but Fareed probably knew what this was referencing so in that case I was somewhat immune from castigation – if we can in fact use castigation in this context. Really to me this is no big deal. I did end the sentence with a slight grammatical stretch with:

…face.

After the other students had a turn and the paragraph was complete, I had Eesa come up and read aloud what had been written. Naturally, I had to stifle a giggle when he stumbled over the ‘nuts’ part and I had to correct him and have him pronounce it properly. I am a teacher after all. If you are going to say ‘nuts’,‘nuts’ should be pronounced properly. Like I said, I am a teacher. But, I must say, I was impressed by Fareed’s poker face when Eesa said ‘nuts.’ And if memory serves me correct, he said ‘nuts’ three or four times, maybe five. Fareed is good at playing oblivious like ‘nuts’ was the nose on his face.

Most of the students started copying down the paragraph without really questioning what was written. There were sentences like “He is short. He has brown eyes. He has black hair. He likes swimming. He likes football.” All of this we have discussed. We did several days on adjectives though when I write ‘adjective’ on the board they give me that look like a caught carp that has been lying in the July sun for an hour or so. Then I might write ‘short’, ‘tall’, ‘big’ ‘small’ – and then they know adjective. It rings a bell. Yes, we have discussed that. Thus, most of them did not question ‘nuts’; what they thought ‘nuts’ referenced, I have no clue.

At this point, let me take a detour and tell you about what happened yesterday. I tried to get the students to tell me how I would go about finding an apartment here. I have a morning class for three hours and then an afternoon class for a few hours. They are different students in both classes.

Eesa is one of the students that I love because he provides comic relief but at the same time I know that I provide him and his friends comic relief as well. Yesterday, I wrote on the board:

“How would I find an apartment?”

Keep in mind that these are low-level English students and this whole question was over their collective heads. How I was able to get the point across was use our big classroom (4mx5m we decided as a class) as a pantomime apartment. I wrote measurements in meters on the board. I acted as if I was cooking, showering, sleeping. Finally, Eesa understood.

“Live with me, no problem,” he told me.

“Live with you?”

“Yes,” and then he added “500 riyals you, 500 riyals me.”

“You pay 500 a month and I pay 500 a month?” I questioned to make sure and I wrote figures on the board to illustrate. Now, the actual class-time of this was much slower than what you are reading. Every question took at least 10 minutes if not more to get through what I was trying to say because, as I said, they are low level English. At one point, I drew an apartment on the board. Granted, I would be the same way if I was in an Arabic class and the teacher was trying to explain completely in Arabic what I was trying to say in English, though already I know some fabulous Arabic words that I throw around right and left which greatly pleases the students. Maphia Mooshkala – (No problem) is my favorite, Mynephsic – (All by myself) is another.

Eesa then tried to explain what the apartment is like with bedrooms and such. The rest of the class helped him with this. All of them got very involved. At that point, just to be subversive, I drew a bed on the board with two stick figures in the bed and pointed to Eesa and myself and asked him with a certain sort of finality:

“You and me?”

“Huh?” he asked with the most shocked expression as a few of the quicker students, or at least the students paying attention started to giggle.

“You and me?!” I said with more authority, which at this point had most of the class in an uproar.

“No. No. NO!” And with that he jumped back about two feet as I put my arm around him. This naturally sent the class into even more of a laughing fit.

“You and me,” he told me as the rest of the class listened; with this he drew a line down the middle of the classroom.

So then in my afternoon class, I posed the same question. And, I had the same molasses type of reaction. One of the Mohammads was able to decipher what I was saying and told the rest of the class in Arabic. Faisal wrote on the board his apartment is 1500 SAR a month (divided by 3.75 for American dollars) and it is just steps away from the campus. I told him I wanted to look. He asked me if two tomorrows would be okay. I told him yes.

But then another Mohammad said he had an apartment and from what I could figure my share would be $500 SAR a month (do the same math as above), which seemed like a really good deal. He would show me after school.

So after school, I met up with him, leaving a tiny bit early - since my office hour, which is never used ever by students, is the hour after school. On the way out, I must say I did feel a bit like Janet Leigh not when she was stabbed in the shower but when she is leaving with the money from her company after she had feigned a headache and she waves to her boss as he is crossing the street and then realizes that she was not supposed to be downtown with the company money but at home with a headache. This is because Samir – who runs the school – was locking the side gate, the gate the students most often use, when we were leaving.I told him I was going to help the students.

“Good. Good,” he smiled as we left. A teacher told me later that I actually was fine since I was with students. Samir approves.

So this Mohammad and I got in his cousin Ameir’s beat up Toyota with two other students who in fact are more cousins and we headed to…I don’t even know where. His cousin Mohammad is one of the more advanced students at school in a higher-level class and he talked to me as we zipped in and out of traffic. Ameir weaved in and out of traffic flawlessly.

We arrived at the apartment, which reminded me of a once incredibly grand hotel that has declined into a somewhat bug-ridden flophouse. Advanced English Cousin Mohammad went to the only bedroom and removed some of the clothes and debris that had been scattered about and told me:

“This room yours.”

Naturally, I was taken aback. At this point, I was not quite sure how to react. These four cousins – two sleep in twin beds, two sleep on the floor, all in one room – graciously and selflessly offered their home to me. As in, they were going to give me the only bedroom and they were all going to sleep in the living room that they had hastily converted into a bedroom. What was I to do? I can safely say that this is the first time I was ever in this situation. And I started to rethink my idea of asking students for help when it comes to apartment hunting. Actually, I started to rethink a lot of things at this point.

For the time being, I would just go along with it and not say anything. I was not sure how to not be rude. This was truly a testament to the Arabic hospitality that has been shown to me so far during my brief time in this country. How could I not be moved? But how could I not be rude as well? How could I?

While I am thinking this over, the other cousin who is named Abdur(blur) but goes by Blur carried in a big bag of food and drinks, which included a platter of fruit. Advanced English Cousin Mohammad went about setting plastic saran wrap on the floor with Ameir’s help. Blur set out the food. We then all dug in with our hands, yes eating rice with our hands scooping it from a big platter.

This is the way to eat Cupsa, which is my new favorite dish. I love the Arabian food and you do get to eat with your hands just like you did before you started using utensils. The more adept you are at eating with your hands, the more revered you are. You are not looked upon as some hillbilly named Roy or Bubba.

Over and over, I told them how much I love Saudi and the food and the people. The dinner was full of warmth and good humor. We finished and then it was prayer time. They laid out the prayer rug and Advanced English Cousin Mohammad led the prayer, which I thought truly spiritual. Some of this had to do with the fact that I had no clue what was being said in the prayer. There was a lot of kneeling and bowing and chanting but it was disarmingly beautiful.

After the prayer, Original Mohammad (from my class) after looking up a translation and consulting Advanced English Cousin Mohammad on the proper way to say it said:

“Mr. Tyson,” he then paused for dramatic affect, “will you accept our offer to live in our house?”

Naturally, I was floored. And I was not sure how to answer but by simply saying:

“Mynehpsic.”

Of course, Mohammad was sad but I had actually answered in Arabic. And they now understood that I wanted to live by myself. Mohammad told me he is sad that I am not moving into the place but he understands.

Naturally, the whole thing was a misunderstanding. And, now they want me to come over and see them every day, which is not going to happen since my mornings start at 6:20 a.m. these days and I am completely exhausted when I get home from school in the late afternoon.

But then we were talking about nuts weren’t we and how I decided to not censor Fareed for writing said word on the board. This would have been no big deal but then Ziad asked what nuts are when I sat next to him to look at his paper. I told him to ask Fareed. Fareed pointed to his nose.

“Not nose,” I said to Ziad and told Fareed to explain. Fareed was the one who wrote the word on the board after all so he should be the one to explain what it is. This would serve him right for bringing bathroom humor into my classroom. He just pointed to his nose.

“Not nose,” I said once again. “Fareed?”

He just looked at me perplexed.

“You know what it is,” I said coaxing some sort of response from him.

“Nuts,” and he points to his nose once more.

At this point, I pointed down to the region where they reside and I said “Nuts!”

With this Ziad turned white like he had been shot and Fareed just asked truly perplexed “Nuts?”

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Do we still get paid if we get kidnapped?

Honestly, just a minute or two before I had sensed danger. I was walking back from the high-end shopping street because every thing was closed. Friday is holy day. I was taking a shortcut from the shopping street back to the compound.

“Do we still get paid if we get kidnapped?” I had asked our boss Joe a week or so ago. There has been some sort of skirmish in Yemen so in retaliation there has supposedly been a rash of American kidnappings. I was in a remote area. I had just passed an armed guard. I was taking a shortcut. There was no one on the street because today is Friday.

Here Friday is Sunday. Jim said nothing gets done on Friday. I had asked him earlier in the day if he wanted me to direct him to the hotel. This is the hotel a few blocks from our apartments in the Saudi City Airlines compound. He is navigationally challenged. He wanted to see about getting maid service, which could be done through the compound hotel, but he did not want to be frustrated so he said he would wait.

“Nothing gets done on Friday,” he said with finality.

So I walked to the shopping plaza by myself. The hotel is on the way. Jim did not want to go out in the heat. I do not blame him. By the time I had reached the gate of the complex, my face was dripping with sweat and once again I had forgotten to bring a kerchief.

D&G, Just Cavelli, Burbbery, Gucci – all closed. The two or three malls with food courts were closed as well. I was hungry. In the distance, I saw the Golden Arches. I would like to say that I have not had McDonalds for ages but through no fault of my own I would be lying. A student took me there a few days ago.

The student is not one of my students. We pass in the halls. And he always extends his hand and smiles and asks emphatically asks how are you? I had seen him at the Kibda place the week before and he had given me a ride back to class but then he wanted to take me riding around in his car as young men do and I was too tired. I had work to do in my office so I told him we could ride another day.

A few days ago, I passed him in the administration building hallway when I was taking advantage of the air conditioning on my way to get Kibda – a curried lamb liver (surprisingly good) sandwich.

“Do you want to go to lunch?” I asked as I passed him.

He took a minute to translate what I said from English to Arabic and then he answered - “Yes.”

I walked fast but he walked faster. He kept looking at his watch. We took a shortcut through the classroom building out the backdoor to his car. We got in his car. He turned on the air conditioner and we sat.He called his friend. And we sat. He told me that his friend would come. We sat and waited.

Five minutes later, two friends showed. They got into the car. We drove off.

“Eat what?” he asked me.

“You choose,” I said but I realized he did not understand.

“Anywhere,” I said to clarify but he still did not understand.

“McDonalds” he announced.

“Okay, great” I told him.

We made our way through the lunchtime traffic in his late model Toyota Corolla, which still had the plastic over the seats. The traffic was not bad until we got on the main road and then it came to a sudden halt.

“Cars bad,” He told me. “Lunch prayer soon start.”

Now I knew why he had been rushing and looking at his watch and tapping the steering wheel waiting for his friends. Prayer would start within the next ten minutes and everything would close five - or sometimes ten - minutes before. It was imperative to get to McDonalds soon or I would have to wait until after prayer which could sometimes be a good 30 minutes and that would mean I could be late to my afternoon class.

Prayer takes place five times a day – the first at sunrise or a little before. The next one comes a bit after 12 pm. A third one comes sometime after 3:30 pm. The forth one comes near 6 pm. The last one comes at 7:30 pm.

During this time, non-praying Muslim shopkeepers and non-Muslim shopkeepers take breaks and by no means rush back to work. So a twenty-minute prayer time can easily turn into twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, or even forty minutes. Forty minutes is absolutely not uncommon. So getting to McDonalds for food before prayer time was most important. This often becomes a game of sorts.

Finally, traffic cleared enough for us to hop a curb and brave a shortcut into the McDonalds parking lot just as a worker was locking the door. With this the student jumped out of the car and pointed to me and shouted in the direction of the door:

“American!”

I got out of the car and went to the door. And the student to reinforce what he had just said pointed to me and once again shouted to the worker locking the door:

“This is American.”

From what I have been told, businesses can be fined if they let in Saudis during prayer time but Westerners are given amnesty.

The Filipino worker - many workers at the Arabian McDonalds are Filipino I have been told – opened the door and let us in. He told us there was nothing but various chicken sandwiches left. I took a chicken sandwich. The student had nothing. At this point, I realized the student was just giving me a ride to lunch. He had not planned on eating himself. He had probably just eaten Kibda when I met him. I thanked him and we got back in the car and headed back to school.

One of the friends in the back seat who had been silent spoke up:

“Champagne, you like?”

Alcohol of any sort is forbidden in the Kingdom. These students have heard of people talk of alcohol. Bottles of smuggled whiskey of the Jack Daniels variety and the like can fetch $400 American and up.

“Too much,” I replied. “I like champagne too much.”

The whole car laughed.

“America crazy?” the other backseat passenger asked.

“Oh America so crazy,” I replied in accidental broken English and added, “American girl crazy.” With that I pantomimed the taking off of my top and the shaking of my make believe breasts. All of the boys shrieked with laughter. As you probably know, single guys cannot be around women other than mothers, sisters or grandmothers. Thus every unmarried male whether he is 13 or 40 has the raging hormones of a teenager. Thus, if during my lesson, I happen to draw a female on the board, you can practically here the thump thump thump of the overly attentive member hitting desk around the classroom. You would think that I would be old enough that this would not give me a perverse pleasure but I am not.

Today, I was alone looking for food and McDonalds was the only thing open. Maybe having to do with the fact that it was on the same street as Burberry and Gucci and other high-end designer brands, the inside was very chic as if Ligne Rosset had designed it. This was definitely the swankiest place that I have ever eaten a quarter pounder with cheese. I chatted with the Filipino worker as I ordered. He seemed to enjoy speaking English. Later when I was leaving, he told me to have a nice day and to come back soon. I told him I would but I hoped that I wouldn’t.

“Do we still get paid if we get kidnapped?” the question I had asked Joe when he announced that Americans were getting kidnapped once again ran through my head. He had just laughed as a reply. I took that to mean that we would not get paid.

But to tell you the truth, every single person that I have met in Jeddah - be it on the street, in the souk, in the grocer, at school (which includes my somewhat surly student named Hassan who never brings a pen and has a somewhat nasty scar on the left side of his face) – is nothing but friendly to me. When I tell the people I meet that I am from America, they never fail to say:

“I love America.”

Thus, I think about the media and what agenda the media has. That agenda is, it seems to me, is to sell more advertising.

Nevertheless, I do opt to take a short cut on the way back to the compound. And yes, our compound, as is every compound here, is walled with armed guards manning the gates. So I take a side street off of the main road and I wander down the side street thinking about my students.

My students have names like Saadoon, Fareed, Wafi, Rami, Ibrahim, Bandar (who wore a cap sideways the first day and still always has this look of surprise on his face), and Ziad (who wore the full Arab dress the first day and did not write but motioned that his buddy would be doing the writing which made me wonder if his buddy was his personal assistant. He had the air of a sheik.) Naturally, there are a half a dozen Mohammad’s and just as many Abdullahs.

They really do not speak much English but they did understand my pantomimes. Already, I have fallen in love with Saudi. I love Saudi I told them. I spoke of the magic of camels, the possibilities of magic lamps and genies. Although they do not speak much English, through drawing pictures on the board and just being generally goofy, they understood.

As I am walking, I am thinking and not paying attention really. There was a guard post but no walls so I did not walk down that road. Nevertheless, about 100 meters down the road there was an alleyway that looked to be a nice little shortcut. As soon as I darted down it and spotted the graffiti covered port-a-potties, I thought something strange. There was not really anything other than a feeling but I kept walking and soon emerged onto a paved road that ran by an unseen guardhouse.

An armed guard emerged and I looked at his automatic and was nervous, shaking in my shoes nervous actually.

“Where you go?”

“I am just trying to find my way home.” This I knew he did not understand. He just kept staring at me with his gun ready. He made a gesture with his hand that I assumed meant he wanted some identification. I took out the card with my address at the compound and handed it to him. He looked at it but did not give it back. This annoyed and scared me.

Another guard approached. This guard was unarmed. This guard smiled. This guard spoke a bit more English.

“This belong to King,” he told me.

“The King’s property?”

“Yes, King.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” I said and I may have bowed or I may have cowered at their feet. I am not sure which. “I am dumb. I am a dumb American.”

The guard smiled and the other guard gave back my identification card.

“Can I go that way?” - with that I pointed to a barricaded road that I assumed was barricading traffic from coming onto the road where I now stood on the King’s property. The smiling guard nodded yes.

I started walking and to be honest I felt a bit like Dorothy on the yellow brick road. About half way to the barricade I turned around and called to the guards:

Monday, October 10, 2011

Riyadh to Jeddah

“Just my luck to get my head chopped off over Badfinger.” That’s what I was thinking at that moment. And, no, I am not talking about the digit on my person. The Badfinger to which I am referring is the British pop band on Apple discovered by George Harrison or Paul McCartney depending on whom you ask. Would I be in this same situation with Elephant’s Memory or Mary Hopkin?

A harmless song like ‘It’s Over’ suddenly sounded blasphemous like Aleister Crowley himself had played the opening riff in this crowded music free market adjacent to the Red Sea packed with weekend shoppers looking at electronic gadgets and hiding behind hajibs. Again, I am getting ahead of myself.

After a few days of conferences and workshops in Riyadh, I was off to Jeddah where I was to spend the next year.

The day started with Michael getting kicked out of the mall. This is what happened. Michael is one of the teachers that I immediately connected with. Another teacher Lee jokingly said that we might have to be separated because he accused me of being evil, and Michael of being an instigator.

What happened is this. Michael had to replace a split duffle bag for the flight to Jeddah. We were told to meet at 1 p.m. in the lobby of the hotel. At 8:30 a.m., we picked up our first two weeks salary from H.R. In between the time that we got our checks and the meeting time Michael planned on going to the mall next door to find a new duffle for his dirty clothes since an unnamed airline probably Turkish Air -who played ‘Splash the Contents of New Prada Cologne All Over the Middle East Mid-Air’ with me - ravished his duffel.

Incidentally when I got my two weeks’ pay, this was the first riyals I had seen. I looked at each bill and the King smiled back at me on each one as if to say “Welcome to my country. Teach my people English. Don’t cry over spilt Prada.” Did I mention that I had just bought a bottle of Prada aftershave a few days before I left America only to find it spilt all over everything in my new Tumi bag? Did I mention that? IN the scheme of things, I was lucky. Some teachers did not even get their luggage.

But I am getting off point. Michael went to the mall next door to find a duffel. Here I should add that Riyadh is somewhat strict or can be strict regarding dress codes especially at the mall and especially on family day and especially if you use the f-word towards a security guard who is familiar with said word.

Michael wore shorts to the mall, not Daisy Dukes but over the knee shorts, which is forbidden depending on who you ask. He asked the guard if he knew where he could get a duffle. The guard gave him a vague answer. Michael turned to whoever was with him, maybe Lee, and said, “He doesn’t know what he is fudging talking about.” And he did not use the word ‘fudging.’

With that Michael tried to brush past the guard and go ask someone else in the mall. The guard did not know English but was familiar with the f-word directed at him and told Michael:

“Family day. No short. You leave.”

“I just want to ask about a duffle.”

“Family day. You leave.”

“Over there,” Michael pointed to a merchant manning a kiosk. “I just want to ask him.”

“You leave. Family day.” With that the guard escorted Michael out of the mall.

So Michael came to my room and got my backpack. He asked if it would be okay to put dirty clothes in it. I told him I had schlepped the pack all over Thailand so nothing he put in it could be any dirtier than what it has already seen and/or held. At that time, he told me that since he has Hispanic lineage, he is sometimes mistaken for an Arab and so he does not get to pretend that he does not know the rules like other westerners. After he told me this, he took the pack and left.

During my stay at Holiday Inn, I somehow had scattered my belongings all over my room; though I had hung my suits, my stuff was scattered everywhere mainly because I was rushing from lunch, to a meeting, or almost sleeping through meetings and rushing to and fro. So I had some packing to do before we met in the lobby. At some point, I would have liked to take a short nap but that was probably not going to happen.

While I was packing, Michael rang.

“I have a big favor to ask,” he started.

“Yes,” I said getting ready for about anything.

“The backpack is not going to work out,” he said.

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah. Would you mind packing my shoes?”

Fortunately, I actually had some extra room in my luggage - that whole we-are-all-in-transition-whether-we-know-it-or-not thing – so I told him no problem.

“You haven’t planted a bomb in them have you?” I asked.

“No,” he laughed.

Since the time was approaching 12:30, I thought that I would grab some lunch in the dining room before we departed for Jeddah. Lee and a few others were in the lobby already. I checked out of my room and then I went over to talk to Lee. I told him I was going to have lunch in the hotel restaurant. He told me that we were not on the lunch list since we were checking out. This was disheartening. Since I had already checked out, I sat down and waited. Ten minutes later, Michael came down. Lee told him the same thing.

Michael sat down as crestfallen as me. We sat and said nothing. Suddenly Michael got up.

“I am going to check and make sure,” he said to me.

“Awesome,” I said. “Wave to me if we can.”

If anyone could make lunch happen, Michael could. I sat anxiously waiting for the high sign. From my vantage point, I could see him talking to the maître d. The maitre d consulted the list. A few seconds later. Michael waved me over.

“You rock!” I told him excited that I would be able to eat before we went to the airport.

The other times that I had eaten in the hotel restaurant, I had travel stomach. Now I was somewhat recovered from my jet lag and my appetite was back. I had the salmon the smoked and the smothered. I had cucumbers and the various Middle Eastern pleasures. Fruit was there; I grabbed it. There were approximately 40 items to choose from and I am sure that I tried 39. With all of it, I topped it off with a few rolls. After so many months in OverEatersAmerica, I decided to forego a dessert though they all looked scrumptious. I am sure my stacked plate made up in calories for any foregone dessert.

Then it happened. After we had eaten the most excellent lunch ever, the manager came over and told us we had to pay for our lunch. We were floored. Michael can be the most charming man when he turns on the charm. He explained that we were on the list. And that the waiter told us we could eat but the waiter should not get in trouble because he was just doing his job because we are on the list. The manager brought over another manager and it became slightly circular and ever so Monty Python at this point.

This went on for several minutes. We told the manager and the other backup manager we were told we could eat. We had not broken any rules. The managers repeated we had to pay. We repeated we were on the list. The managers repeated we had to pay. We repeated we were on the list and added the waiter should not be accountable. He was just doing his job. At this point, scattered around the restaurant, we spied other colleagues sitting down and eating as well. We did not rat anyone out.

But then, we spotted one of the representatives of our company. One of the nicest men I have ever met. We waved him over and explained the situation. He completely understood and took care of the problem immediately, which was an immediate relief.

We thanked him and the staff and proceeded to the lobby since 1:00 p.m. was drawing near. At 1:00 pm we were all ready to go to the airport. Everyone was accounted for. We were excited to be in our new city. The same excitement was with us at 1:30 pm when we were still waiting for the shuttle bus to take us to the airport. At 2:00 pm, the excitement was on the wane and something like panic was starting to set in because the flight was at 4:00 and we had no idea how long it would take to get to and through the airport to our plane. By 2:45, we were resigned to the fact that we would be going on a later flight, we hoped.

As soon as we were resigned, the shuttle showed. We loaded up 15 people and 15 people’s year’s worth of luggage in a shuttle that would comfortably fit 10 people and 10 people’s two weeks worth of luggage. We were not comfortable but we were on our way to the airport. Soon we were away from civilization on a lone stretch of highway that led to the airport.

About 15 minutes into the lone highway stretch, something slightly bizarre happened. The driver pulled off the road onto what looked like a section road, nothing special, no highway merge, nothing. He stopped the shuttle. We all stared at each other quizzically.

Someone in front called back to the ones in back that he had got lost. We were dumbfounded. I mean I have never been to Saudi before but I am pretty sure that if you are looking for an international airport it is not going to be on some random section road.

Then as suddenly as he stopped, he pulled back out on the highway and continued. I had attached myself to Michael at this point because he knows all of the ins-and-outs of traveling Middle Easterly. He told me whatever I did to get ahead of the pilgrims (people wrapped in towels with no passports making their pilgrimage to Mecca) because it took forever for them to be processed. I said I would just follow him.

When we arrived at the airport, we had 25 minutes until our plane took off. Michael was hopeful. He thought we could make it. I thought he was dreaming. We hopped out of the van and grabbed our luggage as fast as a year’s worth of luggage could be grabbed. We quickly nabbed a cart. Threw our luggage on it and we made haste to the ticket counter.

This is when we noticed an unclaimed plastic bag.

“Should we tell someone about this?” I asked.

“Yeah, that might be a good idea,” Michael confirmed. “I’ll go find a guard.”

I held his place in line while he went to find a guard. The guard was incredibly nonchalant. He asked Michael if it was his. Michael looked at me incredulously. Just about that time, a passenger at the ticket counter who was done checking in came by and grabbed the package, which was a lamp, and took it away and looked at us and smiled.

“Yeah, I just wanted to show you my new lamp,” Michael said in the direction of the guard after the guard was long gone.

By the time we got through the line, we only had 10 minutes to go through security and get to our plane. Michael still believed we would make it. At this point, I thought him crazy. After all, we were in an international airport. And it was not an airport in a country where people going from one place to another were particularly moved expediently. But deep down inside somewhere within my being, I had faith.

Thus, we ran to the security check expecting a line, which there was not. We got through security rather quickly. They did not even make me take off my shoes. But then how would we get to the gate before it closed? Fortunately, the gate was right there. We ran to the plane. After us, a football team came in. We wondered if they were famous to be arriving so late. They were very young.

The flight was non-eventful. We arrived in Jeddah. A shuttle and a couple of cars fit us almost comfortably. We were checked into a motel at the compound where are apartments are but the apartments were not yet ready, something about bug infestation. The hotel was old but clean and was actually a small one-bedroom apartment with beautiful crazy ‘70s tile in the bathroom.

The next day we had off and I really did nothing but lie around and try to get adapted to this new world I had entered. I walked around the compound a bit. I went to one of the pools (we have three) and I chatted with Michael. The day was nothing special, nor was the next day. That day we went to school and were assigned our offices and classrooms. Then the next day was orientation for the students. And we met some of the Arabian staff.

The first introduction to the students was the following day for testing, which consisted of students being herded into rooms and given reading, writing and listening tests. Later when I marked the results, I knew my work was cut out for me. In China, I had enough students who understood English to make a go of it. This time, I am in virgin waters. These students know no English. This is going to be tough.

But what about Badfinger? This is what happened. I wanted to buy an i-phone docking station and so I gave the store clerk my i-phone to test the speakers and I did not really think about the whole ban of Western music when I did this. And I did not think about the fact that there was no music being played in the market whatsoever.

This did not register until the opening chords of ‘It’s Over’ blasted through the market like Moses on crack. I was stunned and felt as if I was in a nightmare where you cannot move fast enough to save yourself. I was sure that the media police would come and take me and, yes, there would be a public beheading. It’s over.

But, I was able to turn off Badfinger. When I did shut them down, I shut my eyes like in that moment beforea crash and then I slowly opened them and everything was normal. No one had seemed to notice. Badfinger had gone unnoticed. It wasn’t over. I was alive. I love Jeddah!

About Me

Really the blog will tell you more than you would ever probably want to know about me. Just know that I am a retired performer who has been on a path imagined by Dickens filmed in wonderful cinemascope by Passolini.